Drop by drop, isolated news stories and emerging documents are eroding the popular myth that Saddam Hussein had no connections to Islamofascist terrorists. These revelations undermine war critics efforts to whitewash Baghdads ancien regime  such as when Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid declared: There was [sic] no terrorists in Iraq. Likewise, Sen. Carl Levin (D., Mich.) describes a nonexistent relationship between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.

Reid, Levin, and others who dismiss the Baathist-terrorist nexus would struggle to do so if the Bush administration unveiled the evidence tying Hussein to Osama bin Laden and other extremists. President Bush immediately should release papers discussed in the January 9 Newsweek and the January 16 Weekly Standard.

A slide headlined High-Level Contacts, 1990  2002 lists numerous meetings and communications among bin Laden, his deputies, and top Iraqi officials. In 1999, the presentation says, al-Qaida established operational training camp in northern Iraq; also reports of Iraq training terrorists at Salman Pak, a military base 20 miles south of Baghdad. In 2000, According to CIA fragmentary reporting points to possible Iraqi involvement in bombing USS Cole in October.

Is this all fabricated? How much of this presentation is true? Releasing all 60 or so slides for public inspection would help sort this out.

The Weekly Standards Stephen Hayes talked to 11 federal officials before concluding that documents U.S. troops captured in Iraq prove that the former Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein trained thousands of radical Islamic terrorists from the region at camps in Iraq over the four years immediately preceding the U.S. invasion. Hayes reports, Secret training took place primarily at three camps  in Samarra, Ramadi, and Salman Pak  and was directed by elite Iraqi military units. Al-Qaeda-affiliated Muslim fanatics, such as Algerias GSPC and the Sudanese Islamic Army, were among the 8,000 or so murderers instructed between 1999 and 2002.

Handwritten notes, typed forms, computer discs, videos, and other exploitable items confirm Husseins philanthropy of terror, Hayes says. But America has translated only some 2.5 percent of this huge cache. Federal officials barely discuss what they have learned. Even unclassified papers remain unavailable. Absurd. Having studied some of these artifacts, one intelligence expert says: As much as we overestimated WMD, it appears we underestimated [Husseins] support for transregional terrorists.

Asked by Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R., Mich.) to release some texts, National Intelligence Director John Negroponte reportedly told the House Intelligence chairman: Im giving this as much attention as anything else on my plate to make this work.

Earlier this month, Hayes writes, federal immigration judge Anthony Rogers decided to deport Ahmad Mohammed Barodi, a 41-year-old Arlington, Tex., convenience-store owner. Barodi testified in a January 4-5 hearing that he entered America in 1989 on a phony Syrian passport furnished by the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood (SMB), an Islamic terror group. He admitted to smuggling bogus passports into Saudi Arabia for SMB. According to Justice Department records cited by KTVT, CBSs Dallas station, the SMB sent Barodi to a 21-day guerrilla warfare training camp in Iraq in 1982, with the approval of Saddam Hussein. The document adds: Barodi advised that the Iraqi government provided all of the training aids consisting of RPGs (rocket propelled grenades), firearms and the facility.

Moreover, the Butcher of Baghdad was not as secular as the no-connection crowd insists. He added Allahu Akbar (God is Great) to the Iraqi flag just before the 1991 Persian Gulf War. He also began to pray publicly to bolster his mosque-cred. Hayes cites a SENSITIVE August 22, 1995, UNSCOM interview with Hussein Kamel, the tyrants son-in-law who defected to Jordan that year. Kamel told U.N. weapons inspector Rolf Ekeus, The Government of Iraq is instigating fundamentalism in the country . . . Now Baath Party members have to pass a religious exam. He added: They even stopped party meetings for prayers.

Meanwhile, Dick Cheney gave Hayes a boost Wednesday. As the vice president told radio host Tony Snow: Steve Hayes is of the view  and I think hes correct  that a lot of those documents that were captured over there that have not yet been evaluated offer additional evidence that, in fact, there was a relationship that stretched over many years between Saddam Hussein and the al-Qaeda organization.

To its enormous detriment, Cheneys comments notwithstanding, the administration has been nearly silent about Husseins decades of collusion with Islamic terrorists. The worry, White House aides tell me, is that revealing these ties would generate media criticism and anti-war catcalls. Pentagon spokesman Larry DiRita told Hayes that some reporters might discover exculpatory material among these papers, then wed spend a lot of time chasing around after it.

That risk does not excuse paralysis. If the president wrote MoveOn.org a $10,000 check, they would denounce his penmanship. Bushs detractors never stop complaining, so the administration simply should make its case. If handed the keys to Fort Knox, dont worry that someone might whine about the wallpaper. Grab the gold.

Administration officials also should remember that the United Nations Oil-for-Food scandal resembled an eccentric one-woman show when reporter Claudia Rosett began exposing it. Then the documents tumbled out. Rosett was vindicated  and how! Worldwide probes, resignations, and criminal arrests followed as the contours of this $21 billion shakedown became clear.

Stephen Hayes similarly remains among the few journalists excavating this huge, deliberately concealed story. Now Newsweek has nibbled at the Iraq-terror connection. Other journalists should stop napping and demand that the White House finally document everything it can about Saddam Husseins multifarious links to terrorism.

The Democrats made a great case in the 1990s about Saddam's dangerous terrorist connections.

But I pointed all of this out, plus the new evidence of terror training camps in Iraq, to a Democrat/Liberal - and all I got back as a response was a string of expletives about how GWB engineered the war for profit.

3
posted on 01/13/2006 9:15:53 AM PST
by coconutt2000
(NO MORE PEACE FOR OIL!!! DOWN WITH TYRANTS, TERRORISTS, AND TIMIDCRATS!!!! (3-T's For World Peace))

The November 6 1998 US Grand Jury indictment of OBL states as follows, this was issued out of the US District Court - Southern District of New York.... note the last sentence...

4. Al Qaeda also forged alliances with the National Islamic Front in the Sudan and with the government of Iran and its associated terrorist group Hezballah for the purpose of working together against their perceived common enemies in the West, particularly the United States. In addition, al Qaeda reached an understanding with the government of Iraq that al Qaeda would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al Qaeda would work cooperatively with the Government of Iraq.

>"The Democrats made a great case in the 1990s about Saddam's dangerous terrorist connections. "

You see that just "proves" how powerfull and evil GWB, Karl, and Cheney reaaaaaaly are!!!! They could even make the Dims believe it way back then. ////sarcasm for rational people+++sarcasm for deluded dememted dhiminocraps

ABC CBS NBC CNN its all the SAME, Propaganda. Might as well call them all AmeriJazerra. Show them how much Psychological Gravitas Hugh Bris has. Vote with your remote! Shut down the Alphabet channels. *"aka the ENEMEDIA

Good point here, but I'm surprised he doesn't mention the support the US gave to the Mujihadeen types when they were fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan. This is a perfect example of an unnatural alliance formed against common enemy.

It would not matter to the average hate-Bush, hate-America liberal if this connection is proven beyond a shred of doubt. They and the MSM would continue to believe there was no connection. Plus, they would continue to bring up other irrational, tin-foil conspiracy arguments such as profiteering, revenge for daddy-Bush, oil, etc., etc, etc.

We have reached a point where I don't consider these 'debates' rational. Therefore, I have stopped having them with my known kooky liberal friends in order lower my blood pressure and keep my faith in the human race.

The man who did the most to publicly deny and obfuscate these connections between Saddam and Atta was none other than George Tenet, Bush's former director of the CIA.

Why Bush kept Tenet on, and continues to keep on hundreds of similar clintonoids in the CIA, FBI, State Department, Pentagon, and maybe even the NSA, is a complete mystery.

Clinton may have been a crook and a traitor, but at least he understood that cleaning out the administration and putting in his own people was job #1.

Tenet stood up day after day before the press and embarrassed the administration by denying any connection between Saddam and the terrorists. Bush just politely smiled and did nothing, for YEARS.

Anyone who thinks the administration is cleverly keeping all this concealed until the midterm elections are near, I have a bridge to sell them. The only thing that is destroying the Democrats is their perpetual habit of going too far and letting themselves go over the top in public. The administration has done relatively little to help themselves.

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